GenePeeks: startup uncovers risky sperm bank matches. A startup can help identify recessive diseases that might show up in the children of women and sperm-bank donors, Technology Review reports.
Sperm donors are already screened for a handful of genetic conditions, and recipients can choose donors based various other kinds of qualities. Within the next year, GenePeeks would like to offer clients a genetic-analysis service that can show how donor DNA would combine with the recipient’s DNA. A technology called DNA-scanning microarrays examine roughly 250,000 DNA bases in the genomes of donors and recipients.Then, based on how DNA is mixed and divided during egg and sperm formation, the company can compute thousands of virtual child genomes.Each of these virtual genomes can be analyzed for disease risks, and potential donors that produced virtual babies that inherited a genetic disease can then be excluded by the mother-to-be.
Who’s excluded will differ from client to client. The service will likely cost less than $1,000. [Via Technology Review] DNA: making counterfeiting, theft much more difficult. London's holiday valuables could be safer from theft this year.
Applied DNA Science, a U.S. provider of biological anti-counterfeiting technology, has partnered with the UK Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to offer DNA-based property marking kits available to residents who reside in neighborhoods with high burglary rates. Applied DNA's deal was the MPS was announced on Friday. The MPS has utilized its technology to prosecute 50 cash transit hijackings to conviction; every prosecution was successful. Couriers rigged cashboxes to spray the company's uncopyable plant-based DNA on stolen bills, which a U.S. national lab tried but failed to duplicate under a Defense Department directive, said Dr. Jim Hayward, Applied DNA's CEO. London residents will use the same unique DNA to mark and register their belongings with the MPS. "Our DNA products are already used across Europe in high security applications. Soon, everybody will be sequenced.
It’s nearly time.
The whole human genome -- all 3 billion letters -- can be decoded for $1,000 and in just a few hours. And soon, it’ll actually make sense to include genetic scans in routine medical care. Eliza Strickland reports for IEEE Spectrum. When the first human genome was decoded by the Human Genome Project 10 years ago, it took 13 years and $3 billion. In some hospitals right now, cancer patients are having their genomes checked before their doctors decide on treatment. Soon, Ion Torrent’s Jonathan Rothberg says, everybody will be sequenced -- probably as infants -- and will be able to make diet, lifestyle, and medical choices based on specific information, rather than on hunches about vulnerabilities.
Knowledge of a person’s genome will allow specialists to customize medical treatments and drugs for that patient, to maximize effectiveness while minimizing side effects. Several other companies are also racing toward the $1000-genome goal. Image: Ion Torrent. Doi:10.1080/00313220601020064 - Wald_article.pdf. Can a company patent your DNA? Supreme Court hears BRCA gene case. The U.S.
Supreme Court building. (Alex Brandon / Associated…) Can a private company own rights to your DNA? The nine justices of the Supreme Court will consider that question Monday as lawyers for Myriad Genetics make their best case that the company should be able to keep its patent on two genes known to influence the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
Challenging that notion will be lawyers representing the Assn. for Molecular Pathology and other scientific organizations, which argue that allowing genes to be patented slows or shuts down scientific research involving those genes. Myriad Genetics is a Salt Lake City biotech company founded by University of Utah researchers. “People with a mutation in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have risks of up to 87% for developing breast cancer and up to 44% for developing ovarian cancer by age 70,” according to Myriad’s website. But many doctors, patients and scientists aren’t happy with the situation.
Personalized medicine. Non-health DNA applications.